Canadian indie-folk artist Cat Clyde has unleashed the heart-rattling new “Papa Took My Totems” single and official video. Partially inspired by her Indigenous Métis heritage, the new song finds Clyde reflecting on the ravaging effects of colonialism, the state of the environment, and masculine-dominated society at large. “There’s a lot of sacredness that’s being destroyed in the world, and that’s difficult to deal with sometimes,” she explains. “Totems, to me, feel like places and things that are important and real, to witness the destruction of things like that is devastating”. “Papa Took My Totems” follows acclaimed early cuts “I Feel It” and “Mystic Light” from her brand new studio album Down Rounder, due out February 17 on her own Second Prize Records.

Clyde immediately sparked with producer Tony Berg (Phoebe Bridgers, Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney) in Los Angeles’ famed Sound City studios, laying down the entirety of the record in six days flat and striking listeners with an intimate, livewire electricity. Her malleable singing voice and contemplative, poetic lyricism espouse an essential connection between our spiritual center and the natural world that surrounds us. “Connecting with the natural environment around me inspired a lot of these songs, and sonically I feel like this record is very grounded as a result,” Clyde says while talking about the album’s thematic bend. “I wanted these songs to sound raw and rough, but also placed-together in a way that created—a simple beauty, like the changing seasons or a setting sun.”

Down Rounder is Clyde’s first proper solo album since 2019’s spellbinding Hunters Trance, but she’s also been plenty busy between now and then. In 2020, she released Good Bones, a set of acoustic reimagining from Hunters Trance as well as her 2017 debut Ivory Castanets; last year, Clyde joined up with fellow Canadian country singer-songwriter Jeremie Albino for the stellar collab LP Blue Blue Blue. She’s also racked up millions of streams across platforms, setting the stage for Down Rounder as her widest-reaching album yet.

Photo Courtesy: Laura-Lynn Petrick